Warning: this set of experiences deals with issues and topics that some readers may find uncomfortable. They are presented in a matter of fact way because the exploration is largely unemotional and I have no emotional attachment to the events described. It is suitable for a Mature audience only.
The liminal space, is that place in between. You feel it but are barely aware of it. It's in the doorways, the crack between dusk and dawn, dawn and dusk and those other cracks that allow us to slipstream between this place and the next.
"You're not ready" she said as I sat in her living room drinking chai. The mountains of the lower Himalaya were starting to get their coat of winter snow and the air was cool and sharp. The room itself was a relic of times gone by. Simple, uncluttered but with furniture of my grandmother's generation.
The weight of her words momentarily crushed me. I had traveled from Indonesia to Kathmandu, onwards to Delhi and suffered three days in a state of food-poisoning induced delirium at a hotel on the outskirts of Delhi so that I could make the flight to Manali.
Delhi Belly
Three days ago I had taken a rickshaw to North Delhi bus station to meet my transport to the hill station villages of Himachal Pradesh - a full overnight trip. The bus station was the chaos you expect in India - people milling about looking for their coach, no proper signage and no one really knowing what any one else is doing either. I spent a full hour searching the rows of coaches, asking every driver but no one seemed to know where my coach was that day. Yes I was in the right place, yes I had a valid ticket, but even the travel agent couldn't help locate the coach. I called the agent a few times but there was no help.
The stitch in my right side and the churning in my stomach became unbearable.
"How much to the Radisson Blu?", I asked a taxi driver on the main street outside the bus station.
Unusually, he didn't want to take me anywhere. Seeing that I was unwell, he reluctantly put my bag in the boot and drove me the two hours to South Delhi. As we pulled away from the curb, I saw a coach with the brand that matched my ticket speed past us on the motorway. By all accounts I was not in exactly the right place (perhaps the stop was somewhere further down the road), and I would not be going to Manali by coach. Not today, not this trip.
It transpired that my driver lived in North Delhi where we had just come from and taking me to South Delhi meant at least another 4 hours on the road for him. He watched me nervously from the rear-vision mirror as we tried to make small talk with his limited English and my total lack of Hindi.
The driver graciously stopped at a pharmacy on the way so I could buy some medicine and the next three days became a complete blur of sleep, frequent trips to the bathroom and the occasional room service delivery of boiled rice. Rather than deal with the buses again, I paid a full 10 times the fare for a flight to Kullu. I would be there in a few hours.
Manali
The healer and I looked at each other pitifully across the room.
"Come back tomorrow for Reiki. I need to clear your energy and boost your system before you can be ready for what you are asking."
I spent the rest of the day exploring the apple orchards between the village and the waterfall. I never actually found the waterfall that I saw in faded posters on the walls of the shops, but I enjoyed the ramble and watching the men of the village carry large buckets of apples attached to straps on their foreheads as they trudged down the steep mountain paths. They appeared amused to find me wandering around the orchards, but they said nothing and our only communication was through facial expressions.
The reiki session put me into a deep state of relaxation and I lost all sense of time.
"Come back tomorrow. You are still not strong enough. We will see after that".
Forlorn and lost, much like Luke Skywalker was with Yoda, I left the healer again. Upon waking the next day, I shifted guesthouses to a place with warm water and a better view of the stunning mountains - like Switzerland with the taste of Masala.
Finally the day arrived when I was 'ready'. I was to lay down and do exactly as I was instructed.
Any trip to a healer requires an intention and I had come with a few:
Learn more about my relationship and how I am connected to my partner
Contact my guide
Understand my hearing issue
Understand the karmic family bonds
According to my notes, I was explicitly directed to explore life between lives where I would find my guide.
Having read Robert Schwartz's book Your Soul's Plan some years before, I was intrigued when a friend told me about her Past Life Regression Session with Rittu earlier this year. At the time, I didn't know that you could have a 3 hour session with Robert by skype for just shy of $600. I guess this is the trip I needed to take.
Entering the Liminal Space
I would start in a beautiful place in nature, looking up at a rainbow and connecting to one of the colours in that rainbow. Suddenly I felt like I was 'gone'... in a deep state of trance or relaxation.
There would be a long corridor of doors or windows and I would be asked to choose one at a certain point. At that point I was to either open the door or jump through the window and the healer would guide me through the experience through a series of questions. It always started the same way. When it was time to "come back", I was prompted thus: "perhaps you'd like to return now".
The First Door - Back To The Womb
The first door took me back to the womb. It felt traumatic. I could hear my parents fighting and arguing about money - bingo, I had found a very early imprint about my self worth and relationship towards money.
We moved through to ages 2 / 4 / 8 and at each one I remember the traumatic experiences I had at those times - the loss of my grandmother and consoling my mother, an absent father due to his military career, and sexual abuse - all of which require forgiveness and compassion for transcendence.
Some of this was new, much of it was not; but I was reminded that love and forgiveness are the greatest antidotes to such traumas.
Could it be that I stopped listening through my left ear in the womb? I never quite found out.
The Second Door - The Latin Lover
Back in the corridor I chose another door. I was guided to look at my feet immediately and I started to laugh out loud in my weird meditative state. I couldn't believe that I was wearing quite glamorous pointed shoes of a nobleman.
I am in an English castle and I had been taken prisoner. I am Spanish and I am here because of an arranged marriage. The marriage was to be a loveless affair. I am in love with someone else and I have been imprisoned because I was caught with my true love. My wife is a vengeful and jealous woman.
The marriage was purely economic but the adultery could not be forgiven. In prison I am laughed at for my decadent clothing while I languish in the cell - no doubt because the sight of a nobleman in prison makes the other prisoners happy.
I am guided to the death point and to the point just beyond. There is no feeling about the death itself and no remorse at the experience. In that moment I understood the point of that life. I died for my truth. My future wife had her justice, but I had my truth and died for my truth to be with the one I loved, and that was the experience my soul sought.
In reviewing this experience as me, there was an ambivalence about the process of death. It was just another experience.
The Window - The Darkness In Between Back in the corridor it is dark and I am attracted to a window. At the woman's direction, I quickly jump through and find myself in complete darkness. I am not anywhere that I recognise. I am not anywhere at all.
My vision starts to clear and I see/feel a group of formless beings. Instantly I know that they are my soul family and soul group. My sister is absent from this group. What is the lesson I asked for in this I wonder?
There was someone hiding, I can't quite see them, but I also feel that A is there. In this group, I have an overwhelming feeling of compassion, love acceptance and forgiveness. It is being 'beamed' at me from this group of beings.
I am drawn to a group having a discussion. Remembering Schwartz's book "Your Soul's Plan", I was suddenly aware that this was a soul planning session. It was my soul planning session.
In this life, I was to be a Benedictine Monk - a life of service where I devoted my life to 'God' and helped to heal people. It was a relatively mundane life and mostly chaste. I had an illicit lover (A played this role in this life), but the life itself was a lesson in dedication to service.
In later healing sessions, I have been asked about my life as a Monk or as a religious figure which astounds me. None of these people could know about the knowledge I have. It seems that although the life appeared mundane in my soul planning session, it had a profound impact on my view of the world and how my personality formed in this life - a life of poverty, of self-flagellation and selflessness to the point of imbalance.
The Third Door - Orphaned In Paris
I step through the door and find myself flying high above post-war Paris. I can see the Eiffel Tower very clearly and then I see myself in the street. I am an orphaned street boy and see myself being taken in by a wealthy family who has lost their child. I am deeply grateful that I have been rescued from the street.
The father and mother are very loving and under my father's guidance, I become a successful businessman in the clothing trade. I marry a pretty woman and feel that I am totally in love. Moving forward I see that we are later divorced. She had cheated on me which was not acceptable for the family and upset me. In following her life, I see that following our divorce she became a prostitute and dies.
The life moves on and I have a son. He comes out gay to me and I reject him at first. My family does not accept him. He dies of septicaemia and I feel the weight of rejecting him. Before he dies, he does know that I love him.
My second wife was A and I see myself laying in bed with my wife holding my hand and sitting beside me. There is so much love and we are quite old. We had a good life.
I died peacefully with her next to me. The life after my son's death was relatively mundane, but full of love between me and my second wife. There were no other children, just a lot of love. I cried a lot at the end of this life and in my meditative state because I had left A behind.
In Between - The White Light In Between
I am in between lives again. This time I am being welcomed back after another of my lives has ended. My soul family is there doing deep healing on me in a ritualised way. They are repairing my soul and my DNA from the traumas of the life I just lived. It is a beautiful and connected experience.
I become aware of a guide there, he has piercing eyes, long thin arms and a beard. He also has a staff, as if for magic and a shimmering body. I later learn that this is my healer's higher self. He sometimes shows himself during these sessions, but not always; and when I learn this I feel very grateful.
This being has a message for me:
"Be nice to A. Our life will be good and we have nothing to be concerned about. It is meant to 'be', show gratitude, have fun and relax. Be the child".
A and I are here to teach each other something.
I am a healer and I do have intuition. The block I am feeling is related to my left ear - feminine side and hard edged - the receiving side. All will resolve in time. A is a beautiful soul.
I wanted to go and explore the life where A was my husband but I was not able to. It seems there was another one.
With knowledge comes great responsibility...
The Fourth Door - Mamma Africa
When I look down at my feet, I see that I have no shoes and I have very large, heavy feet. As I scan up my body I realise I am a black, African woman and I am running from my village in rural Kenya.
I have two children, a boy and a girl. The men of the village were killed and the women fled across the sand and the dust looking for shelter. A village appears ahead of us but it is not a refuge. My children are taken away and forced to work. They disobey their new masters and they are killed as punishment for their disobedience.
The men who took us prisoner in their village rape me as a way of conquering my spirit. There is a woman who doesn't like me for some reason. She accuses me of being a witch and I am burned alive because of that accusation. I die knowing that I was innocent - another experience for my soul.
The Fifth Door - The Maiden
I am singing in a field in the South of France having a carefree day. It is my birthday and there is a big party. I am getting ready for the event and my sister is there. I am pretty, and she is inquisitive and curious. She is my actual mother in this life.
My betrothed in this life is an ex-partner of mine who I had a very intense and fiery relationship with. He is dashing in his clothes - a famers Master. We have an incredible sex life and produce 3 children.
In this life my father becomes very drunk and mistakes me for the maid. He rapes me and it is a difficult experience. I find a way to forgive him for this.
The life becomes mundane after this. My father in this french life is a mentor in my real life today.
The Sixth Door - The English Rebellion
In through the door and I look at my feet. I am a farmer in England. I have a pudgy wife and a 17 year old boy - it reminds me of the period dramas we so often see on the television. We live in a small English village. Our family is subject to the tithe like everyone else but one day the village rebels.
I meet my mates at the pub and we are talking about the landholder and our annoyance that he takes everything from us. We organise a rebellion against the landholder but it doesn't last long. They send in the guard to put us down and it is gruesome.
I am chopped on the shoulder. In my actual life I have worked with a healer to heal the energetic wound that this injury caused. It was a deep injury lasting many lifetimes and required a lot of healing to repair the ethereal body.
Nothing much happens after the rebellion. My wife seems pitiful and takes care of me until I recover. The rebellion was for nothing and the life seems unimportant after that event.
These are the lives of suffering where I need to forgive and have compassion. I had many of them. Lives of abuse are repeated until one finds compassion or forgiveness.
In Between - My Guide
I take the window to a white room. At first there appears to be nothing and then I notice that someone has returned from a life. It is A. I am involved in performing the rituals or repair and recovery and through this experience I realise that we are like soul brothers. I am an older soul and we have manifested lives together. As an older soul I mentor him but the teaching goes both ways. We have shared many lives and will share many more. There is a special bond between us.
My sister is on the fringe of the soul group and I see her wave to me. There is love there and unfinished business. I need to forgive her in this life and I also need to forgive myself.
My guide appears and he looks like Gandalf without the hat. He has a formless body and I feel that he is pure love. His energy is overwhelming. I notice he has a staff with a hook and his eyes are piercing.
His message to me:
Have fun, rejoice in this life and do your work.
He will be here to guide me and protect me.
It will be in my dreams that he makes his presence felt with a sign.
That sign will be felt in the heart and the solar plexus.
He has been around for a long time and he reminds me that I too am an old soul. I feel him kindly laughing at my insatiable thirst for information and knowledge and he makes me laugh as well.
He reminds me that there is no need for suffering and to follow my intuition. It is up to me to do the work, and only I can do it now.
I feel my soul expand from my heart centre and I am pushed away from my guide as I get bigger and bigger and bigger. I am no longer the little boy Tim that I perceive myself to be - the child that never grew up properly. I have grown into the person I needed to become in some sense. My soul has expanded to the point it needs to now.
I was expanded back to my safe place to rest and recover. When my guide touched me, my whole body tingled all over (like an all body orgasm).
My crown chakra is now open, I am downloading information from the universe.
And so ends one of my many explorations into my other lives. We used to call them past lives but in the world of quantum physics it's possible they are parallel or something else.
After doing the work with the healer I left Manali the next day and traveled to Kashmir where I set out to meet traders for the scarf business I hoped to create. There is no doubt that this short, aged lady is a powerful woman and deep guide for those who seek her. I remember clearly the feeling of being in her meditation room and of her working on me, the energy that took and her sincere, dedication to her work.
Footnote:
(I closed Mr Goat down after 1 years trading). Somehow, I had left the fashion business behind in France somewhere in a distant time and place that I am inextricably connected to but no longer need to re-live.
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